Infernus » Open Source http://infernus.org Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please. Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:35:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The Curse of Open Source http://infernus.org/2008/12/the-curse-of-open-source/ http://infernus.org/2008/12/the-curse-of-open-source/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:57:30 +0000 James http://infernus.org/wordpress/?p=8 One must only browse the vast repositories of half-finished software at SourceForge to see that many promising (or just plain useful) projects seem to just vanish, left incomplete and at the mercy of bit-rot.

The main reasons for this are threefold:

  • A lot of open-source software is written to scratch an itch. That itch may not be quite the same as yours, and so it may be regarded as finished by the author.
  • Support and bug-fixes are generally dull; certainly a lot less interested that writing something new.
  • Polish is hard – it’s easy to build something rough and ready, and significantly harder to add the sparkle.

I’m first to admit I’m guilty of all points with regards to CheckStyle-IDEA.

This was written to scratch an itch – real-time scanning in IDEA. I have a CI server to do static scans, and my needs are simple with regards to plug-ins and the like. So I was happy with a fairly minimal feature set. Nevertheless, I did try to add more features to help others, and these are mostly where the bugs have crept in.

Unfortunately I gave into temptation and played with other things rather than fixing said bugs. And so, with the holiday upon us, I have done a little to whittle away at my laziness and released a bug-fix version: 2.3, with all reported issues fixed.

So, apologies for the tardiness, and I hope this solves most people’s issues with the current feature set!¹

¹ Of course, if not, please feel free to submit a patch!

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